Qairawan AlHajeri February 13, 2014

Paper #1

HIST-125-AC1

Comparison of the 3 primary documents

In the 15th century the Spanish conquistadors invaded the great Aztec empire (which is Mexico now), they wanted to find gold, they wanted to explore, and they wanted to have land in this newfound area. In 1519, Spanish started their expedition to takeover the Aztecs. Hernando Corts, who was a Spanish conquistador who led that expedition, which brought the end of the Aztecs. Bernal Diaz del Castillo who was also Spanish who joined Cortez in his exploit. The collapse of the Aztec empire was the beginning of the founding of New Spain. Diazs document is more credible than Cortezs letter and the excerpt from The Broken Spears, because Diaz was objective in his tone, and he included detailed information. In the other hand, the letter that Cortez had written to his king Charles V was clarifying what happened in that event by giving only the good things he did. This paper will discuss and compare between the 3 primary sources about the invasion of the Aztec empire. It will be focusing on the most important similarities and differences, and also will analyze the tone of each document. The first thing that is considered as a difference and makes Diazs account more reliable than the other ones is the audience to whom he was writing. Hernando Cortes was sent by king Charles V to take over the Aztec empire and show the Aztecs the Spanish power that they had. Cortez was addressing his king and trying to exaggerate every little thing he achieved and keeping the blunders under the cover, so the king could keep Cortez serving him. Diazs account was written many years after the event for the general public, he was not specifying someone in his writing; it was written to the people after his generation, people

Qairawan AlHajeri

Paper #1

who lived many decades after that event. More than one author wrote the excerpt of The Broken Spears, thus the audience is similar to Diazs, which was the general public. That could be one of the similarities between the accounts.

Another difference between the three primary sources is that every account had a different purpose of writing it. The possible motives Cortez had for writing his letter is to keep his king informed of what was happening and to get the funds from him. However, he wrote his king only the achievements and the great things that he did and tried to show off. For example, he wrote: When they saw that they could not resist, several men of rank of the town came to me and begged me to do them no more harm, for they wished to be Your Highness's vassals and my allies. (Cortez, 1), he wasn't telling the entire situation, he was just saying what was convenient for him to say, a lot of details were missing from his account, it is short compared to the other ones. However, The possible motives Diaz had for writing his document is to inform the general public about that conquest, he presented a full description of how Montezuma was living and described every corner of his palace, and clarifying the wealth of the Aztec empire by giving detailed information, for example, Diaz wrote: As soon as we arrived and entered into the great court, the Great Montezuma took our Captain by the hand, for he was there awaiting him, and led him to the apartment and saloon where he was to lodge, which was very richly adorned according to their usage(Diaz, 3). He wrote the positive and the negative things about those two sides. Diaz wrote in his account: When the necklace had been fastened, Corts thanked Montezuma through our interpreters, and Montezuma replied, "Malinche you and your brethren are in your own house, rest awhile," and then he went to his palace which were not far away. (Diaz, 3), This shows that he was writing for both sides, he was not in Montezumas side and was not in Cortezs side. The excerpt of The Broken Spears was collected and written to show the indigenous civilizations view of the Spanish conquest. It showed how the Aztec

Qairawan AlHajeri

Paper #1

messengers and the Spanish met each other, and also showed the power of the Spanish people, and how the Aztecs were afraid of their power. Based upon the fact that this document is incomplete, and wasn't written by one person, its hard to determine the motive of many authors, because we dont have their entire story, we don't have any of their backgrounds. Excerpt from The Broken Spears was originally written in the Nahuatl language, and then it was translated to Spanish, after that translated to English. After all those translations, it weakened the believability of this account, because the content of the document might have been changed during the translation process, It was translated two times, so we are not clearly sure if the meaning is the same as the original one or not. The meaning might be lost and it might mean something different in the other language, but the other accounts, Cortezs and Diazs accounts, were translated from Spanish to English, which is not a big issue as translating from many languages.

The tone of each writer is another contrast that was found in those 3 documents. The tone of Hernando Cortez in his letter to King Charles V was egoistic, proud, impressive, and too positive. In his letter he tried to hide the bad things he did, by exaggerating and being proud of the victories they had. He was trying to be positive by showing him that he was doing what he was supposed to do. However, Diaz tone was objective, detailed, informative, and descriptive. He was writing it to inform the general public about the history of the Spanish conquest without being subjective, without adding his opinion. Just telling what exactly happened, by writing the positive and the negative things. Furthermore, the tone in The Broken Spears document was almost similar to Diazs document by being informative, but in the indigenous peoples perspective, it was telling how was the meeting between the Aztecs and the Spanish. The tone was fearful and impressive. They were afraid of the Spanishs power and their strong cannons. Moreover, they were impressed because they saw how different they were from the Spaniards and how they were superior to them.

Qairawan AlHajeri

Paper #1

The similarity between the three documents is that they were all written about the same event, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, and they were all talking about the same period of time when the battle began.

To conclude, the time period and the event were similar in all the three documents, which was about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in the 1519. Audience, purpose, and tone were the differences of those 3 primary sources; every document had a specific audience, specific tone and specific purpose. Although Bernal Diaz wrote his account many years after the conquest, I still see it a believable source, because of his tone and purpose.